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Curbside recycling is a tool that communities use to reduce the need for landfill space. This study provides contingent valuation estimates of household willingness to pay (WTP) to continue a curbside recycling program in the face of budget cuts. Comparisons of two forms of the contingent valuation method (CVM) are provided: a single bounded referendum and a payment card. Neither approach emerges as unambiguously superior. Response rates were virtually identical. Both approaches show that support for curbside recycling is highly sensitive to price. Regression results from the payment card provided a more thorough identification of socio-demographic variables associated with WTP than the referendum, but the explanatory power of the two regressions did not differ significantly. The referendum estimates of mean WTP exceed those from the payment card, although the disparities are less than those typically reported in the CVM literature. Local policy makers cited the CVM results as influencing their decisions regarding funding options for the future of the program, and seemed to appreciate the fact that the two approaches provided a fairly narrow range of estimates of WTP. In an era when more of the burden of financing of environmental programs is being shifted to the local level, use of CVM to estimate the WTP of consumers for highly disaggregated goods and services designed to achieve environmental improvement will likely become more relevant to local decision makers who are interested in understanding their constituents' views.

Two types of air-assist sprayers were used to treat, from one side only, a single row of hedge-pruned, red maple (Acer rubrum L. ‘Red Sunset’) trees in a commercial Ohio nursery. A traditional orchard type sprayer and a prototype air curtain sprayer using crossflow fans and hydraulic nozzles were evaluated for differences in canopy deposits, spray coverage, and downwind ground deposits. The air curtain sprayer produced more uniform deposits vertically but not higher mean deposits than the traditional orchard type sprayer. The air curtain sprayer also produced somewhat higher ground deposits downwind of the treatment area. There were no differences in spray coverage between sprayers despite differences in the droplet spectrum produced by each sprayer. Evidence from the coverage and ground target samples indicate that slower fans on the air curtain sprayer might be needed to reduce air speed to retain more spray within the tree canopy. As operated, neither of the sprayers can be expected to produce uniform spray deposits around the nursery stock if treatments are made from one side of the row only. Canopy and ground target deposits indicate that alternate row spraying will not necessarily produce uniform deposits across two tree rows as planted at the test site.

In pot-in-pot nursery production, information on the amount of drainage water loss from the pots due to irrigation and rainfall is beneficial to improving irrigation water use efficiency and optimizing nutrition management. An experimental field site was established to determine drainage water loss from pot-in-pot container nurseries with micro-irrigation. The site consisted of 50 container-grown trees, 10 tipping-bucket rain gauge units, and a portable weather station. Rain gauge units were calibrated four different ways to determine repeatability and reliability for real-time measurement of the drainage water. Volume of water was calculated from the product of number of tips and volume per tip. Accuracy of measurements was verified by the amount of drainage water collected weekly in collection buckets located under rain gauge units for various irrigation applications and rainfall events. The maximum difference in the weekly amount of drainage water collected with the collection buckets and measured with the rain gauge units was 1.215 L (or 5.3% error) when the daily irrigation application to five trees was 15.5 L. The system reported real-time measurement of drainage water due to irrigation and rainfall, and provided a research tool to evaluate strategies for nurseries to better manage irrigation schedules.

Spray deposits at various elevations within crabapple trees and on the ground were investigated with an air blast sprayer equipped with conventional hollow cone nozzles, air induction nozzles, and conventional hollow cone nozzles with a drift retardant in a commercial nursery field. Airborne deposits at three elevations on sampling towers and on the ground at several distances from the sprayer were also investigated with the three spray treatments in an open area without trees. Droplet size distributions across spray patterns were measured with a laser particle/droplet image analysis system. In general, there was no significant difference for deposits within nursery tree canopies and on the ground with three different spray techniques. With the 700 L/ha application rate, which was 360 L/ha lower than the rate normally used in nursery application, the tree canopies received over 4 to 14.5 times spray deposits actually needed from the air blast sprayer with the three spray techniques, and a large portion of spray droplets deposited on the ground.

Techniques are needed to ecologically monitor nursery production practices with proper use of water resource and nutrient management. An experimental system to examine water quality, irrigation efficiency and drainage from pot-in-pot nursery container production was established in a commercial nursery field. The system mainly consisted of a plot containing 50 trees planted in 50 pot-in-pot containers and irrigated with micro spray stakes; 10 drainage water measurement devices; 10 pot media moisture probes; 10 thermocouples; a weather station and a data logger. Preliminary tests indicated the system was feasible to monitor water inputs, drainage water loss, medium moisture content and temperature, leachate of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium in drainage water, rainfall and weather conditions, and tree growth in pot-in-pot nursery production.